


For Love

by samskeyti



Category: Love in Thoughts (Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-21
Updated: 2010-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samskeyti/pseuds/samskeyti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the hc bingo challenge (prompt = "bullet wounds"). Warning for suicide.</p><p>If you asked him — and they did, severalfold — Paul can't remember hearing the sound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Love

If you asked him — and they did, severalfold — Paul can't remember hearing the sound. What he remembered is Günther made a face like sneezing and dropped like a spilled decanter to the floor. His hand moved, empty now but not quite able to close, Paul remembered that.

Then, _then_ , he ran to him, dragged him to his shoulder, halfway to sitting with Günther's breath harsh at his ear. It was still on the floor beside them and Paul wondered how it would feel, toyed with the idea of picking it up, still warm perhaps and — yes, he thought this — kissing it. He could hold it to his lips like he'd seen Günther do, reverently. He wondered if it tasted of metal, of blood. He guessed at its weight in his mouth.

He wondered, he _had_ wondered along with his friend, but he had lied. He'd suspected — hoped — that Günther was wrong about the happiness, the zenith. He'd even come to hope that Günther wanted him, Paul, to force something, to act, declare himself. To _make_ him wrong.

Paul wanted to cough and move and speak but the sensation in his chest of something heavy and precious ripping, pages and pages of it with paper-dust rising and drifting in the airless still before the room is set alight... He gasped and Günther echoed, a mess of air and noise. Even breathing burnt him.

He hauled them up a little, the two of them. Away from the gun. Günther gurgled shakily against Paul's jaw and Paul gathered his arms in so they stayed folded between their chests when he moved his hands away. Günther's wrists were loose, spilling a wine glass over and over again. Paul pressed a hand on Günther's jacket. He could feel something like a heartbeat, felt it with his entire body, rabbit-thin, startled and racing and Paul couldn't tell for certain which of them it was.

His mouth brushed skin, his cheek, the front of his ear — he could call it a kiss, he supposed — and Günther's breath on his neck fluttered and caught like a sheaf of papers flung and spinning in the air. Sunlight streamed past the curtains, surrounded them with dust and Paul shifted his lips, so slightly, waiting until the shiver came over his skin, again.

He did hear Hilde — a scream from underwater then her feet in the hallway, dense and muffled and old-lady slow. The front door never banged, he was still listening for that when the neighbour arrived. Herr Kostmann (he knows the name now, but then he knew him by a twist of Günther's lip and a put-upon shrug, as that nosy tight-buttoned Wagnerian).

Herr Kostmann stood, hovered and laid a stiff hand on Paul's shoulder as if to bid him to stand, to prise open his arms and unhinge his knees when Paul didn't know if they'd ever unfold again. How he stood again. How he stands.

Paul resisted him, kept his eyes screwed shut while he sat on the rug, heavy as a stubborn, red-faced boy in an aching fury. Not letting go, though his hands cramped numb with holding him. Kostmann pulled once, not hard, on the shoulder of Paul's jacket, then he stepped away. Günther was still and silent. Paul doesn't remember the moment, only that then he was completely calm and Paul lifted his face to look at Herr Kostmann, who had a look of tenderness on his face that Günther would never have believed.

Hilde stood behind him, blurred and white with her hand in her mouth. His face was streaked and gaudy, a mirror of Günther's, Paul knew, but he held his head up while Kostmann and Hilde and the neighbours tutting and sighing now in the doorway stared.

One of his arms slid free and fell, his hand striking the floor, dull and clumsy. Paul snatched him back, repositioning him. Günther's hands are cool, smooth and Paul can hold both his narrow wrists in the stretch of his fingers and thumb. He rocked them both, slowly, as if Günther wanted comfort. As if Günther wanted anything at all.

Herr Kostmann stepped back, inhaled and crouched laboriously, low enough that he almost stuck before he sighed and straightened, wheezing softly as he slipped Günther's gun into his pocket. Paul tucked his face into Günther's hair and hummed, like the murmuring at the end of a gramophone record, when no-one knows which is song and which is echo. With Günther safely lodged in his arms he hummed something they'd both remember, slowed down and gentle but still it left him out of breath. He swallowed, breathed a few fast, wet breaths. Enough, he hoped. His tongue pressed at the fold of blood thickening already, drying, in the corner of his mouth. And he began the song again.


End file.
